“Yes,” Bey agreed, at the same time as Martess and Jhessail both said, “No.”
A moment of uncomfortable silence followed, until Doust said, “Well, then, we’d best manage a right swift success of this getting rich, hey?”
Pennae waved her hands as if to banish all discord, then put a finger on a certain chamber drawn on the most extensive and detailed of the maps; her own. “ ’Tis my belief,” she said, “there’s another level of rooms hidden below this, here, that we’ve already scoured… probably here, beneath the undercrypt, and heading back this way…”
Semoor waved his hand. “So we go looking there next. Yes?”
He lifted his gaze to look at the lamplit faces all around. They were nodding.
Florin reached out to touch another place on the map. “And if we find no way down, let’s try here. I’ve a hunch there are more rooms this way. The rock is softer, for one thing.” More nods.
“Then let’s go,” Agannor said briskly. “Holy men, lead us out of this hole, into a brighter future.”
“Do this, and I’ll be well pleased with you,” Lorneth Crownsilver said with a smile, turning back to his eager niece with a small, rather plain coffer in his hands. “This service to the Crown can only bring you the high regard of the king.”
“Rellond Blacksilver is expecting me?”
Her uncle nodded. “For the usual reasons.” He laid the coffer in Narantha’s hands. “Put this in your chatelaine, and let no one take it from you until you are alone with the young gallant. Put it-or what it holds-directly into his bare hands.”
Once she’d slipped the coffer into her girdle-purse, he clasped her shoulders.
Narantha had seen noble fathers hold their sons thus, when pleased and uttering orders that could only bring glory upon their houses.
“Don’t drop the coffer,” her uncle told her, “and don’t open it until you’re alone with him. Alone, mind: no trusted servants, no war wizards. Act like you want to flirt with him, and get him to send them all away.”
Narantha’s lip curled. “Dally with Rellond the Roughshod? ”
“Come, now. You’ve feigned much you did not feel, and put on many a false face, down the years; ’tis what we nobles do. Shame all bards with your subtle, artfully done hints and sidelong glances. I called Rellond a ‘gallant’ now so sneeringly because in his case it means ‘handsome, arrogant lady-chaser.’ Think of this as a first step in teaching Rellond Blacksilver a lesson he should have learned long ago.”
Narantha smiled, nodding slowly. “Put that way, Uncle, ’twill be a pleasure. In this Year of the Spur, Cormyr holds far too many nobles who are very far indeed from being truly ‘noble.’ I fear that I was very recently one of them. But now…”
She lifted her hands to clasp his, still at her shoulders, and gave them a firm squeeze. Then Narantha bowed her head to him as if she were his respectful son leaving for battle, stepped back and away, and hurried from the room.
Behind the hargaunt mask that gave him the likeness of Lorneth Crownsilver, Horaundoon of the Zhentarim smiled as he watched her go.
Afire with enthusiasm, that one. If ever she balked or disobeyed, he could of course use the mindworm within her to compel her-but right now, at least, such ruthlessnesses were very far from being necessary.
Narantha believed in him, and had been happily spreading mindworms to nobles of his choosing far faster than Horaundoon could ever have ah, wormed his way into their towers, mansions, and the shapes of their most trusted servants or mistresses.
Creth, Huntinghorn, Ammaeth, and now Blacksilver-this was almost too easy.
The stink of rotting fish was sickening.
Lord Crownsilver thrust the lantern forward to almost touch the worn, much-pitted stone. The paint was both faint and flaking, but in the lanternlight they could clearly see the curl-tailed hippogriff sigil.
“This is the place,” he grunted. Passing the lantern to the cloaked and hooded figure who stood in the midst of their three hulking bodyguards, he nodded curtly to the nearest boldblade.
That brute was a bald and much-scarred warrior whose name Maniol had forgotten for the moment. A head taller than his lord and master, he strode silently forward, his plain black war-harness bristling with blades, spikes, and skull-shatter knobs, and thrust the closed door open.
His two fellows had already stepped swiftly in front of their noble charges, but nothing erupted out of the revealed darkness beyond the door, or fell or fired at the boldblade who’d opened it.
Lord and Lady Crownsilver would have chosen safer and more pleasant surroundings than the Scaletail Door-if they’d had any say in the choosing. Swallowing, Maniol Crownsilver reclaimed the lantern and trudged reluctantly forward, seeing stone walls slick with wet slime ahead. The way was narrow, and after a few paces ended in worn steps descending into dripping, noisome darkness with crude handholds scooped out of the rock.
“You will wait for us,” Lady Crownsilver reminded the boldblades icily, “until dawn. Then one of you will remain to watch this door, and the other two bring back all of our house blades to forthwith go down yon stair and find us, slaying everyone who stands in your way. Everyone. ”
She glared at them until she’d collected slow nods from all three, and only then stepped forward into the passage, unhooding as she went.
“I am less than pleased with this, Maniol,” she hissed.
Her lord stood waiting at the head of the stairs, hand on sword hilt. “The slayer’s of your choosing,” he muttered. “Blame me not for this place of his choosing.”
“Take your hand off your sword,” Jalassa Crownsilver snapped, the bite in her voice warning him to say no more about choices of her making. “ ’Tis useless in so close-confined a way. Draw your dagger.”
Her husband obeyed with an angry flourish and set off cautiously down the stair. “Take care, wife,” he commented. Maniol only dared address her thus when he was too angry-or afraid-to care about consequences. “The way is wet.”
Seething in silence, Lady Crownsilver followed her lord, down into unknown cellars, somewhere in Marsember. With every step the air grew colder and the smell of dead fish faded, being replaced by a strange seaweed smelclass="underline" a smell of living weed rather than the rotting shore-tang she was familiar with. With every reluctant step, Jalassa liked her decision less and less.
Indar Crauldreth might be the best assassin in Marsember, and might have lived to acquire that reputation by such one-sided precautions, but she hated to be groping in the unknown, bodyguards and magic left behind her. Crauldreth insisted on much. Why could he not deal with a Crownsilver agent? After all, lawful or not, this was still business…
The narrow stair ended in a much larger, many-pillared place, everything black-green and glistening. An old storage cellar, that flooded too often for anyone sensible to use it for storage.
The rusty ends of many ladders protruded down into it, here and there, descending through narrow chutes from unseen buildings above. There were ends of pipes, too, dozens of them, gaping ovals like so many hungry maws of eels.
Lord Crownsilver came to an uneasy halt. “I see no red shield.”
“The floor, Maniol, shine the lantern on the floor. D’you expect it to be hanging from a pillar in front of your nose?”
Her husband let out an angry hiss and took a few reluctant steps off to his right, then returned to head left about the same distance. Then, with a shrug that set the lantern swinging crazily, he forged on ahead another dozen paces or so and repeated his side forays. This time, they ended in a bark of: “Aha!”
Lady Crownsilver hurried to stand with him, and gazed down at a red shield, about the size of her smallest personal carriage, painted on the floor. Someone had washed the slime and mold away from it, to leave its worn paint standing forth clearly from the surrounding “Put the lantern on the floor,” a cold voice came to them, sounding as if it came from right at their elbows; both Crownsilvers jumped. “And put your dagger away, Maniol Crownsilver. I don’t want you to cut yourself and bleed to death before you can pay my fee.”